Several items of portable IT equipment have been lost or stolen both on and off-site recently, including laptops and mobile phones. Obviously these are easily portable and attractive to thieves.
To reduce the risks, staff should bear the following in mind:
- Portable equipment should be locked away at the end of each day, and especially at weekends, preferably in a locked cabinet in a locked room
- Losing your equipment not only causes inconvenience, it also poses a risk -if data is kept on your device, particularly if the data is personal or other confidential data (in which case it must be encrypted)
- Portable devices should be encrypted and password protected to minimise data loss and the passwords must be kept separately from the devices
- Outside the University don’t leave equipment on open display or unattended for any period of time
All losses of University-owned equipment should be reported to security@shu.ac.uk(ext 2000) and ithelp@shu.ac.uk (extension 3333), and potential data losses should be reported to the Information Governance Officer (extension 3361) in accordance with the Data Security Breach Management Procedure.
Further help and advice can be found on the IS&T intranet site, or by contacting itso@shu.ac.uk. For data protection guidance please see the University Secretariat intranet site or contact Helen Williamson (extension 3361,foi@shu.ac.uk).